Friday, June 22, 2012

SimpleUI - Proposal and Working

Finally, i am near completion of fltk renderers, and here i introduce about SimpleUI , project assigned to me during this summer.

Many a times, projects are written which require various plug-ins and user inputs for some configuration parameters. Those plug-ins present their own user interface, not necessarily in same language or platform, resulting in inconsistency for porting the projects on other platforms. Most of the times, it defeats the purpose of writing and making that projects. Hence, we require some system such that UI's do not pose obstacle in building such projects.

SimpleUI tries to solve this problem. It creates a set of functions and widgets in standard formats which can be used for user input as such, as well allow programs to display their UI's for a specific UI library like gtk or qt. Goal is to create a simple and highly flexible GUI system, which allows easy creation of dialogs including callback mechanisms, advance UI configuration as well as platform independency.

Technically, users make xforms file ( which are xml-files like html , but also include data as well ) , and pass this to simpleUI program as well as select some specific renderer ( or let simpleUI (sui) detect that ). sui calls specific renderer and creates a UI and post backs results to the calling function as user interacts with the UI.

Friday, June 8, 2012

SimpleUI - Google Summer of Code Project ( OpenICC )

so, i am already very late for writing this post which should have been well written in may itself, anyways let me come straight to the project.

Many a times, projects are written which require various plug-ins and
user inputs for some configuration parameters. Those plug-ins present
their own user interface, not necessarily in same language or platform,
resulting in inconsistency for porting the projects on other platforms.
Most of the times, it defeats the purpose of writing and making that
projects. Hence, we require some system such that UI's do not pose
obstacle in building such projects.
Eg, suppose you have a project which requires use of some plug-in which
only has a qt front-end. Hence, all other users , like that of gnome,
windows, mac, etc will be forced to use command line, or worse, settle
themselves with default values, simply because UI of some plug-in or
module does not work on their platform. It lets the users of the project
down, and hence a lack of confidence in that project.

SimpleUI tries to solve this problem. It creates a set of functions and
widgets in standard formats which can be used for user input as such, as
well allow programs to display their UI's for a specific UI library
like gtk or qt. Goal is to create a simple and highly flexible GUI
system, which allows easy creation of dialogs including callback
mechanisms, advance UI configuration as well as platform independency.

I will post, in detail, about working of project and all minute details in coming posts.
For now, the project is available at github by name of (SimpleUI)